is perhaps a question whether those ideas at any time influenced the policy of the country so fully and profoundly as is imagined, and whether their influence, so far as it had a real existence, has passed away so completely as might be inferred from the language of many modern writers and speakers, especially among those who are anxious to discredit the free trade policy. So with the results of the democratic developement which was to spring from the political and economic struggles of this period. To some contemporary observers a future of boundlessly beneficent possibilities seemed to be opening up before their eyes; to others, more discerning perhaps if less enthusiastic, that future was fraught with almost inevitable dangers, but it may safely be asserted that the course of events so far has justified neither the optimism of the one school nor the pessimism of the other. It may be, indeed, that the nation is even now trembling on the verge of decisions as to foreign and domestic policy which will prolong her prosperity or hasten her decline, but it must in any case be reserved for an historian of a future generation to pronounce on the merits of the various prognostications to which the inauguration of popular government in England gave rise.

Leaving aside for the moment the narrower field of speculation indulged in by Mr. Robert Lowe and Mr. W. R. Greg as to the results of a widening of the electoral franchise, we may turn to what at the present time is a more fruitful subject of interest, the warnings and forecasts of Mr. Cobden as to the future international position of Great Britain. There are some signs that the world is beginning again to recognise the fact, of which Cobden's contemporaries were well aware, that free trade as he understood it was far from being a mere tariff policy. It was on the contrary a policy embracing every department of political life and especially affecting international relations. He realised, as no statesman of his own day realised, and few have done since, that the position which England had taken from the close of the Napoleonic wars of an industrial State dependent for the support of a growing population upon imports of food and raw material, and for the increase of wealth and well-being to a large extent upon foreign trade, necessitated not only the reduction of tariffs but also the maintenance of peaceful relations with her neighbours. It is unnecessary to insist on the interdependence of peace and free trade on the one hand, and of war and Protection on the other, fundamental conceptions in Cobden's foreign policy; it is, however,

interesting to observe how considerable was the effect which his persuasiveness and reasonableness produced on his own generation, and what vitality his ideas have proved to possess in practice even with a generation which repudiates them in speech. The innate strength of his position must indeed have been great to have permeated so largely as it has done the 'pugnacious energetic self-sufficient foreigner' despising - and - pitying character of that noble insular 'creature John Bull."

Sir Spencer Walpole's present volumes deal largely with matters of foreign policy, for, as he observes,

'these were days in which Italy gained her independence: in which Austria was extruded from Germany, in which the United States commenced and concluded the great struggle which had consolidated her territory and increased her power; in which Germany succeeded to, and France descended from, the first place among nations on the Continent of Europe.'

We do not propose to follow him in this fascinating field of historical research, which he has treated with marked success both as regards breadth of view and accuracy of detail; but rather to inquire what were the principles which have guided the foreign policy of this country since the period of active conflict between the Cobdenite and Palmerstonian ideas: between that of non-intervention' and that of a 'spirited foreign policy.' It must be confessed that the main difficulty in the way of any such inquiry is that of discerning anything like a definite theory in the confused and opportunist action of British Foreign Secretaries. Lord Palmerston and Lord Salisbury will probably stand out in the history of the last century as the only two Ministers whose ability, knowledge, and long lease of unquestioned power and authority qualified them, and perhaps enabled them, to intervene with decisive effect in European politics, and to exert a permanent influence on the fortunes of their own country. Yet even in their hands vigorous and continuous action was hardly a characteristic of British foreign policy.

Lord Palmerston, great as was his popularity among all classes of his countrymen in the later years of his life, never enjoyed the advantages which Lord Salisbury's wise moderation and the steady support both of the Crown and of large majorities in both Houses of Parliament secured for him during his long tenure of office. His action was often od and his influence impaired by want of agreement

with colleagues like Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone, and by the growing opposition of the Manchester School of politicians in the House of Commons and the country. That the results of his control of foreign affairs were nevertheless of a more positive and striking kind than was the case with Lord Salisbury was due both to his personal character as pre-eminently a man of action-in this respect the very antithesis of the later statesman-and also to the circumstances of his time, which allowed, and indeed compelled, a much more vigorous initiative from the representative of British power. For he belonged to the England which had been left supreme in Europe in 1815; and the modern era of great Continental military monarchies had scarcely opened. The wonder is not that Lord Palmerston should have been, in his earlier days, assertive and dictatorial, but that he should have adapted himself so successfully as he did to the new public opinion which was growing up around him.

Sir Spencer Walpole's pages give an admirable account of Lord Palmerston's activities, and they certainly do not lay undue stress on his faults of high-handedness, his often 'senseless and spiritless menaces,' as Mr. Disraeli described them on one occasion, and the many instances of mischievious interference stigmatised by Mr. Cobden. If he found 'the country the first power in the world's estimation and left 'it the third' (to quote Mr. Matthew Arnold's exaggerated phrase), the fact was due not so much to the unpopularity which his actions inspired as to an inevitable process of change and growth abroad and at home. His sympathies,' writes Sir Spencer, 'were always in favour of national move'ments and popular autocracy, and he was always as ready ' to recommend the enfranchisement of another people as he 6 was reluctant to concede the enfranchisement of his own.* 'He was the Minister who practically secured the inde'pendence of Belgium, and he was the Minister who worked ' with ability and success to secure the freedom and union ' of Italy. These were great services which the sternest ' critic of Lord Palmerston's policy will not hesitate to ' acknowledge.' Work on such lines as these, it may be added, will always be approved by all who hold that it is bad policy and bad morality for Great Britain to refrain from using her legitimate influence in the family of the nations, and it will, perhaps, be difficult for such persons to

* I. 257.

follow Sir Spencer Walpole in his own 'stern criticism' of Lord Palmerston's policy with regard to the Danish war. To do so would seem rather too much like asserting that it is right to interfere where interference is easy and successful, and wrong when it is difficult and dangerous. The Danish question was a turning-point in modern European history, and Prince Bismarck was the one statesman who had the strength to act on his perception of the fact. Napoleon III. perceived it, indeed, but in foreign affairs it was his misfortune to meet with two statesmen, Cavour and Bismarck, who were at least his equals in intelligence, and far superior to him in force of character. Lord Palmerston, says Sir Spencer, was 'ignorant of the forces with which he had to deal and had no knowledge of the position which 'Prussia was gradually attaining.' Although nothing except the irresponsibility of advanced age can excuse Lord Palmerston's public encouragement of Denmark without having ascertained the possibilities of an understanding with France, and without having judged the strength of the forces in this country, beginning with the Throne, which were arrayed against the prospect of a struggle with Prussia, we should be inclined to protest against the assumption of his ignorance of the questions at issue. For it would not be difficult to maintain that, if France and England could have stood together on that occasion, France would have been spared the disasters of 1870, and Europe the preponderance of the military empires over free and liberal governments which has been the consequence of the consolidation of the German Empire under the hegemony of Prussia. A decision in favour of intervention would indeed have been a bold challenge to what now looks like an inevitable tendency in European politics, but, looking to its probable results, it might have been justified by arguments far more valid than those which on many previous occasions had involved the country in hostilities.

4

The contrary decision actually taken was therefore a decisive event in the history of our foreign relations, and it was so recognised by clear-sighted contemporaries. It marked the triumph of the ideas of which Cobden was the spokesman, it showed that Great Britain was beginning to discern the direction in which her interests as a great industrial State lay, and the limitations which that position imposed upon her. But it exemplified also the abiding weakness of the British conduct of foreign affairs, the apparent absence of any well-understood guiding principle

of action. The renunciation by Great Britain of a leading rôle in strictly Continental politics would have been intelligible and dignified if it had been accompanied by a statement of the broad lines upon which the future policy of the country should, in the opinion of the Government, be based; it appeared on the contrary to foreign observers to be merely the result of weakness and indecision. Nonintervention on principle is a policy, it may even be, as the United States have shown, a strong policy; and sustained and resolute action is a policy; but to balance between the two, to think aloud and count the cost of each alternative in the hearing of Europe, must be injurious alike to prestige and to real influence.

It is

The general attitude of the people of this country on questions of foreign policy is one of blank ignorance and apathy varied by bursts of patriotic excitement. difficult to say which of these moods is the more dangerous. The result is to accentuate the peculiarity of the Constitution which vests practically uncontrolled authority on such questions in the hands of two men, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister for the time being; uncontrolled, that is, except by the clamour of the moment and their own sense of responsibility. In such circumstances continuity in foreign policy becomes a matter of supreme difficulty. A recent writer, Mr. Sidney Low, has urged that the check upon foreign policy and questions of peace and war exercised by the Houses of Parliament is illusory. The present system,' he observes, 'is obviously I very little in harmony with the spirit of representative government,' and he declares with some little exaggeration that we are almost as much at the mercy of two men, as 'far as foreign policy is concerned, as if we were the ' inhabitants of a Continental monarchy where foreign 'affairs are personally conducted by a quasi-autocratic 'Emperor and a Chancellor not responsible to Parliament.'

The instability, the want of continuity, the liability to panic or pressure, which are the outcome of this state of things, are often supposed to be inherent in democratic government. As a matter of fact, the two most democratically governed countries in the world, France and America, have known how to meet the difficulty by facilitating the practical control of Parliament, with the result, it is argued, that their foreign policy exhibits in a far less degree the disquieting features to which we have referred. Mr. Sidney Low thinks that the institution of a Parliamentary